I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.

Monday, April 16, 2007

So... Now Microsoft has Silverlight and tools like Expressions to create really good looking animations and User Interfaces... and a really small 1Mbyte plugin that works in Windows & Mac OS X...

Adobe has Flash... and Flash CS3 & Flex to create really good looking animations and User Interfaces.... and a really small around 1 Mbyte plugin... that works... well... everywhere (Windows, Mac OS X, and yes, Linux)

And Java... well... has Swing and SWT... neither of them has a a tool too easily create really good looking animations and User Interfaces... (Mattise is not bad, but it doesn't compare with Flash CS3 or Expressions), the JRE is huge, Swing and SWT have better integration with current platform UI than ever before... (but, creating really good looking UIs, like those possible with Flash & Silverlight with just the help of a designer... well.. it is just not possible)

So...the Java vs .NET war.... is now the Silverlight vs Flash war? or now we have 3 powers?

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Eclipse & Netbeans are built on Java, a good part (AFAIK not all) of Visual Studio is built on .NET, so why not...It is a lightweight design studio. It is not a replacement for a full Eclipse IDE, but instead is a lightweight tool that allows easy development of applications and allows you to dive into the platform at an affordable price... but... its name says it all.... "Flexible"Just... exactly... what I need for Laszlo...The universe is not user friendly...

So I have been evaluation several presentation layer frameworks, trying to choose one for may future applications at my new job... my boss is very interested in developing applications with a "cinematic" experience... so, the main contenders are:

Open Laszlo 4

Flex 2

So far, the main advantage of each one are:

Open Laszlo 4:

OpenSource (& free both ways)

Flash & JScript UI generation

Cinematic user experience

Flex 2:

Flash UI generation

Free SDK (but AFAIK not OpenSource)

Cinematic user experience

UI Builder

Interactive debugger

Syntax Colored Editor for the Scripts

Lots of Beginner to Advanced Tutorials

Lots of Books

Lots of examples with matching tutorials & books

Cairngorm architectural framework

E4X Support

Based on ECMAScript 4

The main disadvantages of Laszlo are Flex strength (and viceversa):

Open Laszlo 4:

No UI Builder

No interactive debugger

No syntax coloring for the scripts

Lack of advanced tutorials online

Lack of Books (There are only 2, one from the reviews I have read seems to be pretty much a copy of Laszlo reference documentation, and the other I think will be a really good one, but it is unfinished)

Lack on architectural frameworks or guidance (nothing like Cairngorm is available)

The UI Builder is an Eclipse plugin (this is a personal disadvantage, because I prefer Netbeans)

I really wanted Laszlo to win this competition ( I just really like the product, the idea, and I believe competition is good for customers, so I feel that keeping Laszlo alive will be good for the future of both Laszlo & Flex consumers...) but... so far, it seems that Laszlo main advantage as an opensource project (community & books support) is just not as advanced as Flex's (no good finished Laszlo books, no list of best practices, architectural guidance or architectural framework) so, I think the winner, for me, will have to be, for now, Flex... (but I hope that next year Laszlo improves, and I hope I have the chance to use it in future projects)

My wish list for Open Laszlo 4.5:

Lots of beginner to expert tutorials of full applications (with real world authentication & authorization & architecture best practices)

Books, books, books!

IDE agnostic UI Builder (something like what is available for TIBCO)

Architectural Framework (something like Flex's Cairngorm but for Laszlo)

J2EE Integration (something like Flex's Granite project)

Interactive IDE integrated script debugger (even if only for Eclipse)

My wish list for Open Laszlo 5.0:

E4X support

ECMAScript 4 support

Something like GWT of Echo2 but with Laszlo as the underlying infrastructure. (Java only coding)